Pick one:
(a) OMG!!! Raise the terror code to RED!!! Where'd I put that plastic and duct tape, Tom? You were right Loud Obbs, they ARE inside our borders [pause to breathe into paper bag to calm hyperventilation]
(b) Ho hum. Page 29b. Shall we run this at all, boss? There's an update on Anna Nicole's baby's daddy's diaper rash here someplace....
Simultaneous raids carried out in four Alabama counties Thursday turned up truckloads of explosives and weapons, including 130 grenades, an improvised rocket launcher and 2,500 rounds of ammunition belonging to the small, but mightily armed, Alabama Free Militia.
Six alleged members of the Free Militia also were arrested by federal authorities and are being held without bond.
Investigators said the DeKalb County-based group had not made any specific threats or devised any plots, but was targeted for swift dismantling because of its heavy firepower. The militia, which called itself the Naval Militia at one point, had enough armament to outfit a small army.
Hmm. On the other hand, maybe in the future we could contract out these sort of operations to Blackwater Security. Sort of like people donate old buildings they can't afford to tear down to the fire department to burn down for practice? And then afterwards Blackwater can hire them! "Set a thief to catch a thief," the Good Book sez; who better to fight terrorism that terrorists? Reformed terrorists that is.
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Phew. It's only some loons from a militia
I thought you mean the Republican Party.
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
Survivors of Oklahoma City Fed'l Building
...can tell you this isn't innocent good fun. These types of camps were where the OK City bombers played and trained.
Ruth
Something is wrong here
The ammunition count is too low. Here in rural America, 2500 rounds is not unusual in a house where someone hunts with more than one or two guns and any home where there is a competitive shooter would have a lot more ammunition than that. A "brick" of 22's is 1000 rounds, and that is the cheapest way to buy them. If one is going to reload (which is the only way to afford to shoot a centerfire rifle enough to be competent with it, and the way to get loads that will give best accuracy) a small run would be a couple of hundred rounds. Trap or sheet shooters will go through at least a couple of boxes per week and they either buy in bulk or reload in runs of 500 or so. Almost surely, there is either a cache of ammunition (and other stuff) somewhere else or the report slipped a decimal point somewhere.
Well spotted, salmo
130 grenades, 2,500 rounds of ammunition...
I'd hazard the typical unit doesn't have 5% grenades to ammunition, though I imagine both Sarah and Xan could correct me on this point...
I suspect either writerly or editorial confusion
I went back and looked over the linked story at the Birmingham News and the first thing that jumped out was that there are no less than three writers credited in the byline, and the last, because it's at the bottom of the last of three pages them force you to jump to, is a credit for "contribut[ions] to this report" from two more. Keep in mind this is not a real large paper to begin with. Then consider they are attempting to write up an incident which had, they say, some 150 agents making multiple pickups at various locations in in multiple counties.
Then consider that the various agencies involved in this raid--everything from Feds/ATF to state to local fuzz. They may have not have revealed everything they found to the media. There is specific mention of a need to hire a rental truck [!! Can you hear the clerk at the local U-Haul facility: "You want to rent a truck to haul what??!?] to transport everything they found at one of the stashes.
Or finally, the poor copy editor trying to piece together these various reports may have taken some accounts from one story as duplicates of another and excised it, or otherwise confuddled the matter.
IOW I wouldn't take any of the numbers cited in this story as carved in stone, and possibly off by orders of magnitude. And yes, without question there was more, both in ammo/destructive materials generally, as well as members of the group, affiliates, and witting or unwitting other participants in the matter, that went undetected. A hypothetical scenario:
"Hey George, you still rent that storage locker over in Hattiesburg? Howzabout you let me stick some stuff in it for awhile, I'll cover the rent on the place while we're sharin', waddayasay?" [Add cover story as to what this "stuff" consists of to the extent of one's storytelling abilities.]
George may think there's something harmlessly shady, like dodging cross-border sales taxes or the like, about the deal but is unlikely to inquire further. He may even suspect it has to do with his buddy's "gun club hobby" but still agree to the deal because favors-for-friends is a major survival skill in these parts.
Or they were slipped over the border to Miss'ippi
In the dead of night.
Ruth
Depends on the mission ...
Infantry/light armor would carry a hell of a lot more grenades, proportionally, but IIRC armored and airborne lean harder on the bullets than the baseball-bombs.
And it looks like this was a piecemeal account, so ... is there any other press on it?